Driving in the Time of COVID: Can Gas Go Bad?

Dear Car Talk:

I have a question that may be relevant now during the COVID pandemic, while a lot of people are driving less. How long does it take for

gasoline to go “bad” in a car’s gas

tank?

I have a Kia Optima Hybrid and

a Honda Fit. In normal times, I’d

fill each one up every week or two,

when it got half empty, so there’d

always be some fresh gas in the

tank.

These days I’m only putting

about 3,000 miles per year on each

car. I drive each car at least once a

week. If I fill up both cars, I can

probably go two months (or more)

before fill-ups! What’s the best way

to manage gasoline usage so it doesn’t go bad? Thanks. —Mark

I would take a very scientific approach, Mark, and make sure you fill

up each car whenever it gets close to

“E.” You have nothing to worry

about. Most modern gasolines will

easily store for a year.

You may know about the Chevy

Volt, which was the first “plug-in hybrid” model on the market, debuting

in late 2010. It had both a battery

pack, which originally gave you about

35-40 miles on a charge, and a gasoline engine, which could take you a

couple of hundred miles more.

We wondered, kind of like you’re

wondering, what happens if I own a

Volt and I drive less than 35 miles a

day -- like a lot of people do. In the

Volt, you could easily go indefinitely

on battery power alone and never activate the gasoline engine.

Well, it turns out the folks at

Chevrolet thought of that, too. And

they programmed the Volt’s computer

so that once the gasoline had been in

the tank for a year, it would automatically switch the car to the gasoline engine to empty out the fuel tank and

force you to refill it. And they probably erred on the side of caution. So it’d

probably be fine for more than a year.

Certainly you’ll be fine for two or

three months, Mark.

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